As executive director of the NFL Players Association, DeMaurice Smith has never been particularly interested in whether fans were rooting for or against him and the players. He was far more interested in whether they knew the truth about the labor struggle with the owners.

Far more than that, he was interested in making a fair deal for the players, no matter what underhanded tricks the owners pulled.

If you didn’t know that when he was elected to the post in March 2009 -- two full years before the current lockout began -- or during the course of this lockout and all its twists, then you should have figured it out this weekend. On Thursday, the owners pushed the button they knew would work on a certain segment of fans (and, sadly, media, whatever defines that term today) by trying to bully the NFLPA into signing off on its proposal before it had even received the package.

Of course, the majority of outsiders seemed to have seen right through the owners’ cheap tactic. But plenty fell for it, too.

To Smith, little of that mattered.

What mattered was keeping his employers -- and it’s always worth reminding that he works for the players and not vice versa – focused on the goal. The goal, he calmly yet firmly pointed out, was not to meet the owners’ false deadline.

If that meant a loss of public support, it was worth it. It likely all would be forgotten by the time an actual deal was cut in a few days when the players absorbed, understood and signed off on the deal properly to their benefit -- not Roger Goodell’s or Jeff Pash’s or the blustery, “baffled” Jerry Richardson.

So here we are, less than 72 hours beyond the craziness of that night, after players had immediately expressed themselves about the owners’ tactics, after the predictable backlash against them had begun -- and all signs point to the players being ready to agree on the so-called “global settlement."

With the extra time they should have been granted in the first place, no additional preseason games will be missed, no practices, no training camp sessions. The planet survived the absence of football this weekend.

DeMaurice Smith did his job, the one he was hired to do. Right down to the very end.

Smith didn’t have to orchestrate that Thursday-night media blitz by the players in reaction to the owners’ proposal. This was an outgrowth of his philosophy of telling the truth and making it clear regardless of the public reaction. The players got it.

In the midst of it, Smith did some strategically truth-telling himself. In an email that day, he reminded players that they didn’t have to feel pressured by anyone to agree to a deal before they were ready -- and adding, ominously, that the owners just might be breaking the law by further pressuring them to re-certify the union.

Even that was preceded by his manifesto earlier Thursday, when the NFLPA was still awaiting a proposal on which to vote, and while the owners were planning their little staged celebration. In the middle of Day 2 of their wait, Smith walked out into the broiling Washington afternoon and told reporters, among other things, that the owners still showed signs of underestimating them, and that re-certifying just to move the process along was not on the union’s agenda.

“The decision for the players, as men, to come back as a union, is going to be a equally serious and very sober one they have to make,’’ he said.

He did not choose his word lightly. It’s been another theme of his leadership: despite this bizarre public belief that the league is some sort of benevolent father figure that knows best for its underlings, these are grown men fighting for their livelihoods in an unforgiving business for which they pay a far heavier price than the suits who oversee it.

Now, “as men," the players have all but completed their due diligence. It meant four extra days of waiting and no harm done. Less harm, actually, now that the owners didn’t get their wish.

Whatever the NFLPA has paid DeMaurice Smith the last two-plus years, he earned every penny just in the last three days.